


season of grace

by andromeda3116



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-23 04:08:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13182048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andromeda3116/pseuds/andromeda3116
Summary: It reallywasridiculously cold on this planet.But still, between the hand warmers and the drink and the regulation coat that was much heavier than her own clothes had ever been (even if it wasn’t as heavy as Cassian’s or Bodhi’s), Jyn didn’t feel like she was doing that bad. This planet might be the coldest place she’d ever been before, but she had been in only-slightly-less cold places, with less clothing and no chocolate drinks to warm her up from the inside out, and especially no… comrades (she ignored the sensation, lingering still, of his hand on the small of her back) to spend the time with. So it more than broke even.Cassian, however, wasn’t going to let the stupid coat thing go.





	season of grace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ivaylo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivaylo/gifts).



> written as a secret santa gift for crazy-fruit, who requested "Cassian can't stand Jyn being cold". it... kind of ended up being angstier than i originally intended, but a good angst, i should hope. happy holidays, everyone!

_season of grace_

.

.

Cassian knew from before he met her, when she was just a name in a file and a means to an end, that Jyn Erso was stubborn. It bled through every detail, underpinning every other trait — smart, very; resourceful, exceptionally; amoral, at least apparently, if incorrectly — but above all else, possessed of a sort of angry determination, fueled by little more than pride and sheer bloody-mindedness. It had, even at the time, kind of impressed him. 

Now, it was just frustrating.

“I am fine,” she snapped, tugging her inadequate coat tighter around her. “I've been colder than this before,” she added in a mutter, and he managed not to flinch.

“That isn't important,” he replied through gritted teeth. “What matters is that you're cold _now_.”

“Not _that_ cold,” she grumbled, and even Bodhi side-eyed her at that. “Seriously, it's not that bad.”

“So you just… vibrate now?” Bodhi asked, the picture of innocence. “You're _definitely_ not shivering?”

The glare she shot him — and then turned on Cassian, too, although he'd said nothing — was dampened by her shivering.

In her defense, the coats that the Alliance provided their enlisted were no match for a Neftali winter, and the boot situation was beginning to get desperate, even considering that she had more experience than possibly anyone else in the Rebellion in repairing boots with little more than glue and good intentions.

He had offered her his heavy coat at least three times already, and she kept refusing to accept it; Bodhi had managed to trick her into taking his pair of one-off hand warmers only by convincing her that he and Cassian both already had a set each in their pockets.

Arguing wouldn't work — Jyn had a tendency to dig her heels in until she was good and ready to listen, and the harder they tried to make her listen, the longer that would take.

(He sometimes felt he knew her too well for his own good.)

He’d have to drop it for now. She was determined not to accept help even if it meant freezing, and Cassian hadn’t figured out how to talk her out of it yet.

The Cordell Cove Winter Festival attracted sentients from all over the sector, drawn in by ice sculptures and rare gifts and rarer foods; the marketplace, during the festival, was so outlandish that it was almost an unofficial wonder of the galaxy, all in itself. You could get _anything_ during the festival, because everyone came to it, and, at the end of the day, everything had a price.

They were here for supplies, mostly. Following the culling at Scarif, destruction of Alderaan, and evacuation of Yavin IV, food stores were stretched thin, along with… well, most things. Before, Home Base had been made up of a permanent skeleton crew, a semi-permanent roster of senators and officers, and an ever-rotating group of cast-offs and has-beens and disgruntled nobodies who were sent to all corners of the galaxy on various missions — so the base had been able to operate with fewer resources than the entire Alliance, taken as a whole, would have required.

Now, with the entire Alliance relocated to a flagship and a couple dozen auxiliary vessels, the stocked supplies were beginning to run out. They had many cartons of thick meal bars, made of protein and vitamins and compact carbohydrates, one of which could feed three people for a month, but they tasted like dirt and were really supposed to be used for emergencies, rather than standard fare. The rebels could _live_ off of them, but nobody was happy about it, and when trapped on a ship with a several hundred other people, morale suddenly became much, much more of a priority.

Neftali was a good target: even without the festival, they would be able to find hardy and nutrient-rich foods suitable to a brutal winter, which would last, and because it was winter in a place that was cold even during its “summer”, there would be plenty of warm clothes. Command had been discussing establishing a base on an ice planet, and, moving from the humid forests of Yavin, they were _woefully_ unprepared for the cold.

(Hence, Jyn’s inadequate coat. Bodhi had kept his own, and Cassian had long-since acquired his, but the quartermaster had only been able to offer her a passable jacket and advice about layers.)

The planet was also good because of its thin Imperial presence; being on the outer rim, and little more than a snowball with high hopes for itself, it was, from an avoiding-the-Empire perspective, as safe as anywhere in the galaxy could be. Low risk and potentially high reward — ideal for someone still barely out of medical leave.

Cassian minded, in the sense that he felt perfectly ready to return to full active duty, and had for a month, but he didn’t mind either, in the sense that going to a festival with Jyn and Bodhi didn’t sound like such a bad mission.

Bodhi had come along because he was, after all, a cargo pilot, and they had both deliberately forgotten that Cassian could fly just about anything at least as well when the question of a pilot had come up. Since laying low was most of what the Alliance was doing at the moment, nobody wanted to be trapped on the flagship if there was any excuse to get out for a while, so he’d jumped on the opportunity. 

Jyn had come because, after the dissolution of the Senate and the loss of Alderaan, the Alliance suddenly had significantly reduced funding, and Jyn was exceptionally talented at slicing: they’d made a brief stop on an highly-populated world on the way, and she’d effortlessly lifted a wealthy Imperial’s identity. So, in a bit of irony that had brought a self-satisfied smirk to her face, the Alliance was about to get stocked using credits pulled from the account of a vocal Palpatine supporter who supplied the Empire’s military with their high-tech blasters.

(Not just _her_ face, if he was being honest.)

It was a mission, technically, but it was also a vacation, one he’d been needing for at _least_ a decade.

He simply had not predicted Jyn’s stubbornness being such an issue.

(Although in retrospect, he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t.)

“Ooh!” Bodhi said suddenly, perking up at the sight of a Wookie vendor, selling something liquid from a large pot on a simmering burner. “ _Hoth_ chocolate. We should get some.”

Cassian shrugged, but Jyn looked vaguely confused, and asked, “What’s the difference between that and regular chocolate?”

Bodhi glanced at her. “I don’t know, but it tastes better. The wookies make it for their Life Day, I had some once when I was a kid.”

Jyn made a face. “I don’t know if we should be spending this on things we don't need,” she said slowly. “We’ve only got so many credits before we’d have to withdraw more, and they’ll have noticed by now.” Bodhi gave her a wounded look, which became aggravated when he turned it on Cassian.

“It isn’t expensive,” he said, placing a hand on the small of her back; she turned slightly toward him, but relaxed a little. _And_ , he thought but decided not to point out, _it will warm you up some_.

Bodhi had clearly had the same thought, looking relieved and slightly exasperated. It wasn’t exactly lost on Cassian, either, that Bodhi was now two for two in convincing Jyn to accept something that would warm her up, both times using mild trickery.

The Hoth chocolate was good, although he’d never had normal hot chocolate, so he had no idea what the difference was, but Jyn was happily surprised when she took a sip, her eyes lighting up in a way he’d never seen before — open delight at a small luxury, the kind that she (and Cassian) had rarely ever had the chance to enjoy.

It was… nice, and for once in Cassian’s life, he was actually _happy_. Here at the festival, with colored lights and paper lanterns strung between market stalls and hot chocolate and streets crowded with partiers and some band on the corner playing upbeat songs for dancers; here with Bodhi and Jyn, at a festival celebrating family and love and peace. All of which were things that the galaxy — the Force, maybe, or circumstance — had never seen fit to give him much of before.

Never given Jyn much of before, either, if the soft little smile on her face was any indication.

He couldn’t look away from her. 

It was the smile, he thought, that made up his mind. The way that, for a moment, the war that clung to all of them had faded out and left Jyn, the young woman, delighted at a hot, sweet drink on a cold day.

(He’d been carrying her torch for a long time already, but that was the moment — later, much later, he would think _it was the smile_.)

.

It really _was_ ridiculously cold on this planet.

But still, between the hand warmers and the drink and the regulation coat that was much heavier than her own clothes had ever been (even if it wasn’t as heavy as Cassian’s or Bodhi’s), Jyn didn’t feel like she was doing that bad. This planet might be the coldest place she’d ever been before, but she had been in only-slightly-less cold places, with less clothing and no chocolate drinks to warm her up from the inside out, and especially no… _comrades_ (she ignored the sensation, lingering still, of his hand on the small of her back) to spend the time with. So it more than broke even.

Cassian, however, wasn’t going to let the stupid coat thing go. He’d made _yet_ another offer after the hot chocolate, which she had pretended _with force_ not to hear, and then growled in frustration when he realized what she was doing.

For whatever reason, he couldn’t get it through his head that it wasn’t that she _wanted_ to be cold, it was that they didn't really have the credits to spare on Jyn, and anyway, it _really_ didn’t make sense for him to give up his own coat, to make her warm just so he could then freeze. Whatever he was wearing underneath his heavy parka was certainly thinner than the coat she’d gotten from the quartermaster; it just wasn’t _reasonable_.

He seemed personally offended by it, and more as the day wore on and the weak sun only served to make the shadows colder. She eventually took the lead so she could avoid the calculating looks he kept giving her, like he was waiting for a moment of weakness, when he could strong-arm her into a coat they neither truly needed nor could safely afford.

He always worried about her, was the thing. Jyn _had_ had him pegged as a worrier in general, but he didn’t seem to fret over other people the way he did her; she wasn’t sure if she should be flattered that he cared or offended that he thought she needed him.

“Let’s eat,” Bodhi said, near midday, giving her a sidelong glance that she determined to ignore. He probably thought he’d been subtle with the hot chocolate, but Bodhi, Force be with him, had the poker face of a tauntaun. Still, it had been nice, and a bowl of soup sounded good.

She nodded at him and turned to ask Cassian what he thought, and almost ran into a total stranger.

The breath in her lungs froze solid.

He was… gone. Wasn’t right behind her like he'd always been before. Left. Disappeared. Missing.

Jyn blinked, and a half-dozen other lives blinked with her — Liana who’d been sold out, Kestrel who’d been abandoned, Tanith who’d watched them die, Mara who’d been captured, Genna who’d —

She shook her head to clear it, come back to the present. It was a festival, there were a lot of sentients here, he… probably just got separated, it… _probably_ it was fine.

“We lost Cassian,” she said bluntly, the words painful to say, and Bodhi looked around, a bit alarmed. “I mean… not, _lost_ -lost, I don’t think,” she added in a voice that shrunk with every word, more to herself than to him.

( _I hope._ )

She tried to shake away the question _did something happen to him?_ laying heavy in her gut like a stone, with little success.

“He probably just… saw something that we needed,” Bodhi offered, but didn’t sound very convinced. Jyn, a bit neurotically, felt for her hidden blaster and took a step closer to Bodhi, although what she intended to protect him from, she wasn’t sure.

It was so crowded here, and that hadn’t bothered her until the exact moment when she’d turned and found a stranger where Cassian was supposed to be. “He must have gotten separated,” she said slowly, but… he’d been there only moments ago, she was sure, and hadn’t made a sound… it was as though he’d just vanished into the cold air.

It was… stupid, really, the wild emotion rising in her, but she'd been left behind so many times that it kicked her fight-or-flight response, and — he just _wasn’t there_ , and she couldn’t see where he’d gone.  

He was barely off medical leave, which he’d been on for most of two standard months — she told herself that it was just sensible to be worried, there were a hundred ways he could accidentally get himself killed here and a thousand ways someone else could kill him, he…

_He is a fully-grown man who is completely capable of defending himself._

( _But_ , whispered the tiny part of her that was somehow still on Lah’mu watching Lyra fall, _what if something goes wrong?_ )

( _But_ , whispered the tiny part of her that had been half-waiting for this, _what if he just le—)_

“Let’s split up and find him,” she growled, angry at herself. “You go down this street, I'll go back the way we came. Meet back here in fifteen minutes.”

“Okay,” Bodhi said.

.

Cassian almost physically ran into Jyn, who was clearly searching for him, as her expression changed from alert worry to exasperated relief to righteous anger in the space of a second.

“Where did you go?” she snapped, eyes blazing. “You can’t just —  _run_ _off_ like that, are you mad?”

“I didn’t run off,” he replied, and held out the coat he'd ducked away to get before she could stop him: heavy and cream-colored, made of thick wool with thermal lining, which would fall roughly to her knees. She froze, expression melting into shock and then turning to wood. “Here,” he said, but all she did was stare at it blankly, blinking a few times as though she didn't recognize it, so he shrugged. “You wouldn’t take mine or Bodhi’s, so I got you one of your own. Take it.”

“I… can’t —” she started, then stopped, and his jaw clenched.

“Why not?” he challenged. She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, a strange, almost-hunted look crossing over her face as she reached out to take it then stopped herself.

“It’s… you didn’t have to…” she said in a small voice, and he tilted his head in confusion.

“The money isn’t an object,” he replied slowly, uncertain if that was what she was thinking of. “I used my own credits, not the ones you got us.”

He didn’t know how to read the look on her face, which was odd, since he’d gotten to know her quite well over the past couple of months; it was something vulnerable, shrinking, and even while she was visibly shivering, deeply reluctant to take the coat.

“I…” she started, but didn’t seem to have anything else to say. Slowly, hesitantly, she reached out and took the coat, but only stared at it for a moment, then shook her head as though to clear it. “I can take care of myself, you know,” she said, tone edging toward defensive. “I don’t _need_ another coat, it’s not as if I’m going to freeze to death.”

“You might,” he countered, then shook his head. “But even if not, you’re cold and you don’t have to be.”

“I’ve been colder.”

This time, he did flinch: Wobani had been cold, and Imperial prisons in general didn’t give much concern or funding to prisoner comfort. She’d been colder than this, that was true, when she was abandoned and left to rot in chains. He wasn’t sure how to put into words that that argument only made him more determined to make sure she was never that cold again.

“You don’t have to be,” he repeated. “You aren’t a prisoner anymore.”

She seemed to curl in on herself some, at that, and wouldn’t meet his eyes. Finally, after a long moment of staring at the snow, she muttered, “It’s your money, you shouldn’t be wasting it on me.”

His thoughts went still.

Oh.

Cassian understood, all in a flash like a punch to the gut: even now, she was so used to being used and thrown out that the idea of someone worrying about her, and doing something _just_ for her comfort, was so foreign that she didn’t know how to react to it.

And he didn’t know what to do, either; the only thing he _wanted_ was to grab her by the shoulders and pull her close to him, but that was a relationship they didn’t have, and she didn’t appear to want.

“It isn’t a waste,” he replied slowly, and swallowed the words he wanted to say next —  _nothing I do is wasted if it's for you —_  instead making a judgment call that he didn’t really _want_ to make but the barely-concealed panic in her expression begged for. “I’m your superior officer, if you freeze, it’s on me. It’s part of my job to make sure you don’t.”

It had the intended effect, of making her relax, finally accept it, and pull the coat on, but with the excuse firmly in place, the vulnerability flashed into her normal confidence —

“Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “So you don’t get court-martialed.”

— and she was closed to him again, the moment vanishing like smoke.

.

The coat _was_ warm, and he’d somehow managed to get the right size.

But he wasn’t supposed to care, or to use what little money he had of his own to buy her a(n expensive) coat. He was, as he’d said, technically her superior officer, even if the Rebellion was flexible in terms of rank: if it was his job, and he was willing to waste the credits, he would have used the ones they’d stolen and earmarked for supplies. And he wouldn’t have gone out of his way for a nice coat, he would have just gotten her one of those heavy padded ones that looked like marshmallows and, even at a festival, were pretty cheap. They had both _accepted_ the excuse, but it was a transparent one.

It hadn’t been necessary. It hadn’t been practical. And it hadn't, regardless of his words, had anything to do with the Rebellion.

He’d done it because — because —

Four months ago, she’d never laid eyes on him, and three months ago she would have just as easily shot him as smiled at him, and —

And here, now, still limping from the hits he took (for the Rebellion, and for her) at Scarif, he was buying her a heavy coat just because she wasn’t warm. Not even dangerously cold, just _not_ _warm_.

It… made her wonder.

Things had been… intense, at the start, before Scarif and during the escape, but then he'd been in the medbay, in and out of bacta for days and then coming slowly out of a coma for another week, and on suspension and daily physical therapy for another month, and…

She had more or less written it off. She'd been ready to die in his arms — but of course, she'd been certain that she was going to die, so anyone would have done, she would have loved anyone who had been there. It wasn’t about him, it was what about she’d needed. She was… _convinced_ of that, very carefully and emphatically convinced of that. It had been intense because _everything_ had been intense, but now, with a future suddenly opening up to them, it…

(…hadn't changed, if she would ever be willing to admit it. She still felt _known_ by him, they still seemed to always be on the same wavelength, the way he looked at her still sent shivers down her spine. She was still attracted to him, wanted to be around him, even in the quiet, safe moments like this.

She still panicked at his absence, in a way she hadn’t panicked in a very, very long time.)

…would fade. It wouldn’t last, he wouldn’t stay. They never did. She’d turn around and he’d really be gone, one day, probably sooner than later. So it wasn’t a good idea to get too attached, to read into a coat and a knowing expression.

It felt as transparent as his excuse about being her superior officer.

She pulled the coat tighter around her; it really was warm, kept out the damp and the wind much better than the one she’d gotten from the quartermaster, and maybe even better than Cassian’s parka would have.

She tried to shrug it off and focus on the job.

By the time Jyn had caught up with him again, he’d reunited with a relieved-looking Bodhi, who smiled openly when he saw her in the new coat, and patted her on the back. “I was getting afraid we’d have to tackle you or something,” he said, with a nervous little laugh, and she forced herself into the moment.

“You two would lose that fight, and you both know it,” she scoffed, with an exaggerated eye-roll.

“We still have a lot to pick up,” Cassian said, and maybe she was looking for it, maybe she was seeing things that weren’t there, but he seemed almost hurt.

 _Of course he’s hurt,_ she thought, a bit darkly, as they made their way through the streets. _You always hurt the people you —_

She clenched her jaw against the thought and shook her head as if she could physically remove it from her brain before it fully formed. She would just have to make it up to him, or at least thank him properly.

It had, after all, been done in kindness, just for her, at no small cost.

And no matter how hard she tried to focus, she couldn't stop dwelling on that fact.

.

Evening was beginning to fall, hard and frigid, by the time they made it back to their ship and organized all the supplies they’d gotten — Bodhi had made an anxious comment, earlier, about it being suspicious that a little ship with three people was getting large boxes of supplies, but it turned out that a _lot_ of the festival-goers were using the opportunity to buy in bulk, and if anyone even noticed them, they certainly didn’t care.

Jyn had been acting… _off_ since she’d accepted the coat, or — or very determinedly _not_ off, which came out to the same thing. She was trying too hard, hastily covering up the exposed nerve by pretending it wasn’t there at all. Bodhi seemed to think she was just in a good mood, but she _had_ to know she wasn’t fooling Cassian.

While Bodhi got them ready to leave, he and Jyn put away the supplies in the cargo bay, stashed under benches and in smuggler’s holds under the floor and in the walls. They worked in silence, which stretched thin between them in a way it usually didn’t, the air tense in a way that it usually wasn’t, like an animal ready to bolt.

“I’ll be glad to see the backside of this snowball,” she said, with a forced laugh. “It’s certainly pretty to look at, and the festival was lovely, but I don’t know if you can ever _not_ be cold down there.”

“It has its moments,” he answered noncommittally. “Command has been discussing relocating to an ice planet similar to Neftali.”

She paused. “I can’t decide if that’s better or worse than the flagship.”

He shrugged, unwilling to play along any further than he already had, and the silence settled like heavy snow.

( _It was the smile_ , he thought again. That tiny, happy little smile because something was, for once, better than she’d hoped it would be. Contrast with the way her face had gone still, the uncertainty and fear when he’d gotten just a little bit too close. He didn’t know what to say, what to do, how to make her _see._ )

The moment seemed to slowly breathe out.

“Cassian?” she said, not looking up from the panel where she’d just stored a box. She hesitated, and then, in a tone that reminded him of the hangar on Yavin, _I’m not used to people sticking around when —_  “Thank you,” she said softly. “For the coat. I appreciate it.”

She wasn’t quite looking at him, but wasn’t _not_ looking at him either, face half-turned and shoulders tense, as though preparing for a blow. Seeing her like this was odd: the woman who’d single-handedly taken down a squad of stormtroopers, who’d stared down the barrel of a blaster with defiance blazing in her eyes, who’d stolen his blaster then looked him in the face and all-but dared him to call her on it — afraid of even a fleeting moment of intimacy.

He tried to conjure up the lie he’d told her down in the streets, but the words wouldn’t come, so what he said was, “Anytime.”

He had almost expected her to flinch, but instead she turned around to face him, still crouched on the floor, poised to either stand or strike; her eyes darted over his face sharply, searching for something, maybe deception. Usually, he prided himself on knowing and controlling what people saw when they looked at him, but with Jyn -- he knew that his expression was neutral, but he didn’t know what she was seeing there.

She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I was stubborn,” she admitted, with a small, almost imploring wince.

“I’ve always known you were stubborn,” he replied, and she looked back up at him, a wry little smile on her face. “You don't need to apologize for _that_.” After another moment, where she seemed to read something in his expression that meant something positive to her, she stood up and brushed her trousers off.

“Thank you,” she said again, and kissed him on the cheek as she walked past him, toward the cockpit.

The ghost of her — cold hand on the side of his face, body briefly brushing against him, warm breath on his cheek, that soft, small smile on her face — lingered long after she’d gone.

**Author's Note:**

> aside: the difference is tauntaun milk. i did the research. i know this now. i know too much about star wars hot chocolate now. ask me anything. luke and lando love hot chocolate, luke kept a secret stash on the millennium falcon, they make it with "tang bark" (cinnamon), "orchid bean extract" (vanilla), and/or "mallow paste" (guess.) i should not know this, and yet i do.


End file.
